WHERE is Congress on court’s (self-)mutilation of the military?

Throughout our series on judicial tyranny, I’ve been trying to conjure up analogies and metaphors to describe the absurdity of judicial supremacism. Yet, no degree of absurdity or hyperbole could capture what was just promulgated from the mouth of a federal district judge.

Forget about legislating from the bench or even nullifying the Constitution; D.C. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued an order Monday changing the laws of biology and ordered the Pentagon to admit anyone who decides to castrate themselves into the military by Jan. 1, 2018.

In October, Judge Kollar-Kotelly issued a shocking order hinting that plaintiffs suing President Trump’s policy on military enlistment were likely to succeed on the merits that there is a constitutional right for those to serve in the military while undergoing the mutilation process associated with the gender dysphoria illness.

The Trump administration filed an emergency motion to lift the injunction on the administration’s policies pending the outcome of the case, because the court’s order would “impose extraordinary burdens on the Department and the military services.” After all, it’s hard to deny that the logistical nightmare of dealing with “transgenderism” in the military is extremely disruptive, even beyond the issue of safety as it pertains to the mental illness.

Yet, Kollar-Kotelly dismissed their motion and legislated Jan. 1 as the day for armed forces to allow in those who engage in such self-mutilation. “[T]he court is not persuaded that defendants will be irreparably injured by allowing the accession of transgender individuals into the military beginning on January 1, 2018,” wrote the Clinton-appointed judge.

The sick irony of “irreparable injury” is lost on this judge. How can any sane person think there is no irreparable harm to allowing the ultimate masochists into the military and create tremendous logistical and social problems with gender placement in units when the only irreparable injury taking place is the act of castration that she is now blessing as an inalienable right?

And make no mistake: It is a new right that she is creating, tailor-made, for the sexual identity movement. The military has disallowed masochism and mental illness among its ranks for years. Are the courts prepared to make a protected class for those who amputate their arms?

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How on Earth could a judge force a president to accept them into the military … and then callously disregard the irreparable harm to the health, safety, readiness, and cohesion of the military? The military is the last place in the world you would place anyone with such a high rate of suicide, even without the logistical and social problems.

Last March, Judge Kollar-Kotelly ruled that there is no categorical right to carry a weapon in D.C. outside one’s home and refused to keep an injunction against the D.C. gun ban, even though the Constitution says that right “shall not be infringed.” She also blocked George W. Bush’s rule allowing concealed carry holders to carry guns in national parks.

Now she is keeping an injunction against the president’s regulation of dangerous mental disorders in the military. The invisible ink in her version of the Constitution must have replaced the Second Amendment for a clause stating “the right to serve in the military shall not be infringed.”

How have we fallen so low that a district judge can nullify the president’s power as commander in chief, twist natural law in the most grotesque manner, create a right to serve in the military — and not just for anyone, but for those with unstable mental disorders — and have that ruling apply nationwide outside of their individual case or controversy?

And yet, rather than being treated like the like national emergency it is, this will barely get any play on the Right, much less in Congress.

While this judge did not mandate that taxpayers pay for the mutilation, a Baltimore judge (George W. Bush appointee!) did. Also on Monday, a third federal judge, Marsha Pechman of the Western District of Washington, ruled there is likely a constitutional right for transgenderism in the military.

It simply makes no sense that groups like the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) and GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) can find two or three district judges to supplant the president’s power of commander in chief and disrupt the military in such a dangerous and absurd fashion during a time like this.

The reality is that so many other judges would rule differently, and the Supreme Court will likely eventually overturn this folly. Yet the erroneous notion of nationwide injunctions on broad public policy issues even pertaining to national security has now elevated district judges well beyond the scope of judicial power.

Notice how — much like with the immigration moratorium — the Left is shopping for liberal district judges within the Ninth, Fourth, and D.C. Circuits, where they know they will win the appeals.

The Congressional Research Service, the research arm of the legislative branch, stated in a recent report that the federal courts were never intended to wield “a final or even exclusive role in defining the basic powers and limits of the federal government” (emphasis theirs).

They observed that, “[T]o the contrary, the early history of the United States is replete with examples of all three branches of the federal government playing a role in constitutional interpretation.” The report concludes that it was the complacence of Congress over the past half-century that allowed the judiciary to declare itself supreme to the other branches and to the Constitution.

Sadly, at this point, the silence of Congress and the broader conservative movement in the face of this judicial travesty is probably more destructive than the travesty itself.

It appears that we have reached the point where there is nothing a lower court could do that will inspire a movement for even modest reforms to the scope of power Congress gave to those very entities.

Author: Daniel Horowitz

Daniel Horowitz is a senior editor of Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @RMConservative.